


Legacies

by metawohoo



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nothing special happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3355655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metawohoo/pseuds/metawohoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talia investigates Gotham. Bruce investigates suspicious locations. </p><p>Just a little "what if they brought the league to the show" piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacies

**Author's Note:**

> Episode 1.16 is not out and I was bored.
> 
> Random patchwork of bits of lore from the show, the comics and the Arkham games, clearly based on the New 52 Court Of Owls arc with young Bruce going full detective.

 “This, my daughter, is the stage of my greatest failure. Study it. Learn from it, for we will not rest until those streets are cleansed from the vice that infects them, and it will be your duty should I pass away before it is done.”

The girl nodded. She would be ready.

 

###

 

The boy spread the accounting ledgers before him, frowning, and more than a bit dazed by the lack of sleep. It was near two in the morning. Alfred was hovering outside the door, pointing out more and more regularly that rest would improve the sharpness of his mind. But tiredness could wait. Something was strange, really strange, and he couldn't see it.

Lucius Fox's newest project - the top-secret Ion Cortex program - had attracted the attention of a great many investors, most of them well-known figures of the technological field, like Luthorcorp. The others... He couldn't see it. He knew the names. Yet it felt like a long, distant memory, of his father's voice mentioning them. Was it about the restoration of Old Gotham? He couldn't remember.

 

###

 

The air was thick and foul, as one would expect in a city were the steel industry was still attempting to dig its way out of its fresh grave. You could see the chimneys of the industrial district from across town, from the roofs, if you climbed high enough. The steel mills were pouring blackness into the sky, and the girl knew the blanket of clouds that spread all over Gotham had nothing to do with weather.

She missed Tibet and the crisp, fresh air of the spotless mountains. Here you couldn't breathe as deep, and not without being drowned by the smell of sewage and smoke.

The people were even more rotten than their air.

 

###

 

The boy had slept. Five hours, to appease Alfred. Then he had studied his lessons of the day - “Education is important, Master Bruce” - and eaten half of his plate. He had kept it to finish it later, too, or rather to pretend he would.

What was amiss with those investors was their histories. They hadn't gotten involved with Gotham and its companies since decades before, when they had contributed funds to the development of Wonder City.

Now, what did the condemned, ruined place have in common with the Ion Cortex?

“Alfred”, he said. “Thank you for obtaining those records. I will need some more, however. Please find out what Lucius Fox's current project is about.”

 

###

 

“Observe the city, its people. And then, daughter, tell me what you see in them.”

The girl walked from district to district, from Park Row to Tricorner, from the majestic Royal Hotel to the derelict Narrows. What she saw was vice, and hatred, and a pervasive mentality of unaccountability. “This is Gotham”, “this is the way things are”, “just ignore it”. The people were bred into a life of either crime or inaction, and would never attempt to better themselves.

Thieves snatched purses in broad daylight. Women received lewd comments and men would grope them, and the victims only lowered their heads and hurried away in fear. Surely some did protest, and what happened to them? Did they end up in an hospital bed, or merely in the river?

As a stranger of unclear origins in nondescript, cheap clothes, she received her fair share of slurs, for the mere crime of being present. “Chink”, from some six years old boy who was walking with his mother and undoubtedly repeating her views, for she didn't reprimand him. “Go back to your country”, from some shop keeper. “Where is your burka, you slutty little whore?” from a laughing white passer-by who would never walk again. Save for that last, extremely irritating comment, she didn't mind the slurs. The uneducated masses were bound to act like swine.

What did grate her, however, was a car stopping so the driver could ask her the fees she requested for sexual favours.

She smiled and climbed into the car.

 

###

 

Energy, that was the common factor.

The Ion Cortex was an energy regulation system meant to intelligently distribute energy through an area while storing the excess. The ultimate goal of the project was to extend the reach of the current energy production and allow for the development of many third world areas.

Wonder City had been fuelled by a chemical named Lazarus, that had provided clean, natural, renewable energy to the place, up until it was discovered that prolonged exposure induced insanity.

The boy frowned. So, he now knew what those investors were interested in. He still didn't know anything about them, which worried him. There were terrible rumours of slaughters and machinations in Wonder City. Some said that the robots that protested the place had been “reprogrammed” to slaughter people. Some said the ruined city had been sealed off because the “Lazarus” chemical was such a dangerous weapon that the city had deemed it safer to bury it forever.

This raised more and more questions.

 

###

 

The girl wiped her blade. The young man who had been sent to tail her - _Oh, Father, have you no trust in me?_ \- jumped down from the roofs and approached her.

“Has your Father authorized this?” he asked.

She turned to him and looked straight into his eyes until he reconsidered the wisdom of questioning her. When he finally lowered his gaze, she walked away.

“It is not your place to question me, Magician. This had to be done. This should have been done decades ago, and would have been, if everything had gone according to plan. The purge of Gotham City grows closer, and one pedophile will not be missed.”

The young man followed her with the easy, confident grace of one who thought himself much above his station. He was a talented archer. He was a talented spy. He was still not fit to lick her shoes nor her Father's.

“Is your exploration of the city going well? It has been a few days, now” the young man pointed out.

“I have seen the place”, she answered. “I have seen the people. Let us see their protectors.”

 

###

 

A plan of the city wasn't hard to procure. Nor were Wonder City's. The place had been totally sealed of, but if the boy's calculations were right, an abandoned subway was still connected to a station that led to it.

He had the absolute certitude that there was something to be found there. That something could explain why ancient, secretive companies felt the need to emerge after nearly half a century, to get their claw into some all-powerful energy management system.

So he had packed, early morning, as Alfred was preparing his meal, and ran off to the Bowery to find that subway station. Entering it was surprisingly easy: the planks that closed it off had been partly torn down, and he could find more than a few traces of squatting in the first hallway he entered. Trash littered the floor everywhere he pointed his torchlight. Fast food bags, cans of beer, cigarettes... People lived there, which was unsurprising considering the high rate of homelessness in town.

He found his way to the tracks, very happy to have taken the most powerful torchlight he could find, because the absolute darkness was unsettling. He wished Cat could be by his side, then remembered that she was a liar and that she couldn't stand him anyway, so he just shook his head and kept exploring.

He found Wonder City flyers on an announcement board, deep into the room, and knew he was on the right path.

 

###

 

The girl had thought she despised the Gothamites. She had then seen their “cops” in action and discovered that her contempt could go deeper still. Bribes and racketing were the norm, with the occasional blackmailing of a prostitute into sex, a few hits for the local mafia, and more than a little drug trafficking.

They were rotten to the core and formed closed ranks to protect their own. Extracting the corruption from the GCPD would be akin to removing tumors from the body of a terminally ill cancer patient. Death was the merciful way out.

She had followed two members of the narcotics department for the best part of an hour, still trailed by the Magician, and she was coming to the conclusion that the purge of Gotham couldn't come soon enough.

She turned to her companion.

“Give me your crossbow”, she ordered, as she knew the large backpack he carried had to contain at least that weapon.

“I do not recommend attacking policemen. Your Father was very clear: the authorities _cannot_ be alerted of our upcoming attack. I will not allow you to compromise that, even if you _are_ the heir to the league.”

“My father”, she corrected, “does what he does for the greater good. If our definitions of greater differ, he will let me know. In the meantime, I will draw the line at 'selling cocaine to high schoolers'.”

And she slid from the roof to the ground, in perfect silence, daggers at the ready.

 

###

 

The boy had followed the tracks until he found light. _Light_. Artificial light, underground, in a condemned subway, a several minutes walk away from the last signs of inhabitants.

So, the place _was_ occupied. For a start, either someone had hooked it to the city's electricity network, either it was running on the legendary “Lazarus” power. One way or another, maintenance had occurred recently. Light bulbs didn't last forever. Neither did batteries, he quickly remembered. He turned off his torchlight.

The corridor he had found had not been lived in. The floor was dusty but not littered with food wrappers, nor any other kind of trash. A large ad for a freak show was painted on the closest brick wall, in a clearly dated style. “Solomon Grundy, the man who cheats death”.

He kept walking until he found the station he was looking for, the one that led to Wonder City. The place was still lit, with lampposts everywhere giving it a gloomy, ghostlike glow. A large clock decorated with gargoyles hung above the tracks.

The boy had arrived from a balcony, but a rope ladder was attached to it, and getting down to the tracks' level was easy enough. He took a look around, inspecting the abandoned subway wagons with “art nouveau” windows, and the intricate railings on the stairs and platforms. The station had been beautiful, once upon a time.

Then he noticed the footprints. The child-sized footprints.

 

###

 

“GCPD, DON'T MOVE!” a voice screamed.

The girl froze. The Magician vanished in a split second, scaling a wall faster than the newly arrived cop could aim at him. He had left his weapons on the roofs, so she understood his desertion. He was an archer. The best place he could be was “away”.

The girl had her own weapons. She dropped her daggers, as discretely as she could, and started wailing. She was ten. It worked every time.

The cop ran to her, checked the pulse of the two narcotics agents, and swore under his breath. He stood up and looked to the roofs, but there was no sign of the young man he was looking for. _Then_ he turned to the girl and tentatively put a hand on her shoulder.

“Calm down. It's going to be alright. He is gone. You're safe.”

She put on her best terrified child expression.

“T... T-t-they are d-deaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.”

The cop dragged her away.

“Did you know the man who ran away?” he asked once the bodies were out of sight. “Did you see what happened?”

“He-he-he w-wanted druuuugs. They w-w-wanted m-m-more m-moneeeeeeeey.”

Hell, was that a tiring performance. She felt like being two all over again.

“Alright. Hush, hush, calm down. My name is Jim. What is yours?”

“Jim w-who?” she asked, suspicious.

“Detective Jim Gordon. And you?”

Oh, so _he_ was the poor misguided fool who had gone after Lovecraft. Copperhead had ran into a lot of trouble for her failure to frame him adequately for that execution. Not to mention not getting to her target, of course. Now she was one.

“S-sarah”, she answered, before gulping down a few breaths of air so he would be convinced she was attempting to calm down.

“FIVE MINUTES”, another man shouted as he arrived. “I leave you alone five _minutes_ for what I swear was the shortest leak of my life, and you go and manage to find _two_ stiffs?”

“Will you just _call for back up_ already?”

 

###

 

The footprints led the boy to a side door. Some climbing across ropes and ladders later, he found the ruins of an apartment complex suspended over either an underground portion of the Gotham River, or fast moving sewer water. He thought it was a river, really. The sewers didn't go that deep.

The rooms were in a much worse state than the station. The plaster had fallen of the walls, which were crumbling. The wood of the panellings and doorframes was rotting, just as the paper of the books that littered the floors. The humidity caused by the river was destroying everything.

The boy sighed. He couldn't continue investigating: only a few rooms were accessible. The rest of the buildings had collapsed, and there was no way to cross the gap between the side he was standing on and what looked like a very promising door.

He sighed and turned back towards the subway.

The floor gave in under his weight.

 

###

 

Slipping out of the GCPD proved easy. Jim Gordon wasn't about to escort her to the ladies' room, so the girl had just walked there and jumped out the window.

“I told you this was a bad idea”, the Magician commented from the fire escape. “You did not check your surroundings.”

“Gordon is nothing like his father was”, she said.

Her father often cited Gordon Sr. as a prime example of corruption, even if he'd been dead for twenty years. His accomplices and allies were still alive and well.

The young man rolled his eyes and dropped down.

“Well, his father was slime, but he was not stupid, for a start. Come on, the sewers are this way.”

“Good men in Gotham are hard to come by. Meeting him was interesting. Maybe he can establish a new legacy.”

“Not here. Not in a few months, not after the purge.”

_Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?_

“I suppose not.”

Thirty minutes later, they were well on their way to Wonder City, and they found fresh footprints that led to a gaping hole in an abandoned apartment floor, and to a passed out boy with a badly broken leg.

It wasn't a street rat either.

“I'll be damned”, the Magician exclaimed. “Brucie.”

And he started to push the intruder, who was so close to their headquarters and couldn't live to tell the tale, towards the river.

_Suppose there are two righteous within the city._

“Don't”, the girl ordered. “He has an important legacy to fulfil and I haven't investigated him yet. Let's bring him back.”

 

###

 

The boy woke up in an hospital bed, to the concerned faces of both Alfred and Jim Gordon.

The anaesthesia hadn't totally worn off.

“Where's the girl?” he muttered.

He did remember a girl, and small footprints, and something about legacies.

 

###

###


End file.
